Abstract

The dissertation has three sections. In the first I use the theories of self-consciousness of Kant and Hegel to place Jacques Lacan's theory of the mirror stage in a philosophical context. I lay out Lacan's theory in detail, showing how a subject first assumes she is unified with her reflection, then becomes aware of the relational nature of her identification. This later relation between self and image , akin to the relations of language between words and referents, creates anxiety for the subject, because it exhibits a similar ambiguity and displacement of reference. I agree with much of Lacan's characterization of the existential impoverishment that can arise when identified too strongly with an image. As a phenomenology his theory sheds light on the self-alienation that can occur to subjects in a media-dense culture. But in the second section I criticize Lacan's account. My primary objections are his silence concerning the maternal environment and a subject's early social relatedness, and the way he universalizes his theory for all people and all times. I borrow from recent feminist psychoanalytic literature and film criticism to attack Lacan's omissions. In the third section I apply Lacan's descriptions of the mirror stage to analyze the identifications between viewers and images fostered by popular commercial media, especially as these draw on rigid and stereotypical notions of gender. Suggesting an additional perspective on the problem, I introduce the model of narcissism developed by Alice Miller. Her description of a subject's overinvestment with an ideal image differs from Lacan's, in that she traces it back to a narcissistic maternal environment that disrespects the child's complexity, talents, and needs, not to a necessary metaphysical alienation. Miller describes the way an image-identified subject can have a stronger self-feeling than Lacan allows. With Miller in mind I conclude that both the form and the representations of popular commercial media could be changed to honor the viewers' complexity and to encourage non-narcissistic identifications